Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan have both had wildly transformative years. Both pop stars have been in the music industry for a long time, but they have since skyrocketed to culture-defining success recently.
Carpenter and Roan each racked up six Grammy nominations, and they’re both the only artists to score nominations in the “Big Four” categories: Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
They’ve been dominating airwaves, giving viral performances and stirring up cultural conversation so much this year, it’s hard to believe they began 2024 in pop’s “middle class.”
It’s a tale of two tour openers. Roan, who opened for Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts World Tour” from February to April 2024, has earned a reputation for drawing enormous crowds at music festivals. Carpenter, who opened for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” in November 2023, as well as February and March 2024, is now selling out arenas while touring her No. 1 album.
Roan, who is 26, released her first EP in 2017, but it wasn’t until the critical success of her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, released in September 2023, that there was significant buzz around her. Roan’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert in March led to a spike in popularity, putting her propensity for elaborate costume and drag performances on display. According to the music data analysis tool Chartmetric, her Spotify monthly listeners grew more than 500% from February to April.
Following a series of viral performances at festivals like Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza, the MTV Video Music Awards and Saturday Night Live, Roan’s Spotify monthly listeners jumped another 1,491% between April and November 2024. She’s drawn controversy at the same time, facing backlash for her willingness to speak her mind about politics, standing up for herself against a photographer who berated her and canceling performances for her well-being. None of that has stopped her star from rising, though.
Carpenter, 25, is a former Disney Channel star who released four albums through Disney’s Hollywood Records between 2015 and 2019. She drew ire in 2021 after rumors spread that a love triangle she was involved in inspired Rodrigo’s viral hit, “Drivers License,” briefly becoming an internet villain.
Carpenter released her first post-Disney album in 2022, Emails I Can’t Send, which eventually yielded two hits — ”Nonsense” and “Feather” — but their popularity built up over time. The singer had a huge breakout moment in November 2023 when she opened for Swift, charming the crowd with cheeky wordplay, switching up the outros for her song “Nonsense” with topical lines for each city. The salacious church-set “Feather” music video drew controversy, which she playfully dismissed by saying that “Jesus Was a Carpenter.”
Between April and November, Carpenter released an album, Short n’ Sweet and began her own tour, which has been going viral on TikTok for its elaborate set design and her cheeky showmanship. She performed on SNL and snagged a No. 1 hit with her song “Please Please Please,” which also had a viral music video featuring her boyfriend, Barry Keoghan. According to Chartmetric, her Spotify monthly listeners have grown 120% in that time period.
Both Roan and Carpenter have experienced meteoric rises from pop stars’ opening acts to superstardom. As their stars continue to rise, their nods from the Recording Academy suggest there’s no end to their hot streak in sight.
